On May 3, 2010, at 4:09 PM, Richard Fateman wrote:
> Unless you are passing trivial data structures like small integers to
> maxima, how do you propose to encode arguments to lisp functions when you
> call a subroutine in maxima?
Well, since I'm asking a "how do I" question, I don't think I'm proposing anything. :) So I guess I should read your reply as specifically addressing my can-I-call-Maxima-as-a-library question, and you're essentially saying that there is no API available for constructing LISP data structures in C/C++, making the whole library idea impossible from the get-go. Do I have that correct?
> Unless you encode stuff as strings both ways, which is a fragile and
> expensive way to do it...
I'm not sure why that's expensive, unless the structures you're passing back and forth are truly huge. In my case, they would not be. Lisp is extremely easy to parse, so I see the operation as linear in both directions, with a low first coefficient.
Nathan